Diamond Warriors

avail.

'Lord Kane!' I heard Joshu Kadar call out. His shout drew my attention back to the top of the hill, where the Red Knights protecting Morjin had formed up into a half-circle facing my knights and me. 'Give the cup to King Valamesh!'

It is said that the Lightstone can be all things to all people: a talisman drawing good fortune; a vessel containing the secret of life; a golden mirror showing one's soul. Kane sat on top of his horse, unmoving, as he had remained since taking hold of the Lightstone. He stared at the little cup as if transfixed by its beauty. A radiance shone upon his face, and from deep within. Any of the Red Knights might have fallen against him then and knocked him to the ground. But I did not think they would have been able to tear the Lightstone from Kane's grasp.

'Surrender!' I called out. I pointed my sword at the Red Knights sheltering Morjin. An unspoken truce had befallen the men gathered beneath Bemossed's dead body — I did not know why. 'We have broken your lines! We have dismembered you! And we have the Lightstone!'

I tried to speak these words without laughing in bitterness. For Morjin had broken my lines, and my deepest hope, too. And soon, because he was Morjin, an angel of the Elijin, he would recover from his wound.

'You surrender!' he shouted back at me. The knights ahead of him moved aside so that he could face me. Now on top of his great white horse, he sat up straight as any king, one arm bound

with a bandage while with the other he shook his sword at me.

'We still have four men to every one of yours! And a dragon!'

Although I could not turn away from him just then, a flash of flame from the Hill of Fire down by the river caused me worry that Maram could not last long doing battle against Yormungand.

'And we,' Morjin continued, looking at Kane, 'will take back the Lightstone!'

'No!' Kane shouted at him. 'You will never touch this again!'

Although he feared to charge Kane, Morjin did not shrink from gazing into Kane's terrible eyes. No man, I thought, could match Kane's strength, but Morjin was the Red Dragon, and the claws of his covetousness pulled at the little cup with a dreadful, ripping force. I felt Kane being drawn into something even more terrible than himself. High above us, the whirling blackness grew even blacker. I sensed a door to a deeper darkness begin to open.

'You,' Morjin snarled at him, 'will not keep me from it!'

Then Kane's immense will, like the calling of the earth, pulled him back to the world. He pressed the Lightstone to his lips. Its radiance caused his face to shine like a star. He turned to look me. 'No, not I!' he shouted back to Morjin.

Then he rode closer to me, and gave the Lightstone into my hand. 'You are its rightful guardian,' he told me.

Truly, I was — but who was I to guard it for? And how could I possibly guard it? In looking up at the black hole in the sky about to touch down to earth, I knew that neither I nor Kane nor even the Seven could stop Morjin from opening the door to Damoom, for it was already too late.

But Morjin, now looking up at the sky, too, suddenly cried out: 'I could free him — but I will not! No man is my master! Who should rule the stars? Only he who can command their very light and make it his own! Who is meant to be the Marudin and rule all of the Galadin and Elijin and the other orders? Not the one whom the Galadin defeated and bound like a slave, but only he who has the power.'

For the benefit of the men who followedhim, no less me and mine, he declaimed that he had assembled upon this field an invincible force. He would win the battle, he said, and reclaim the Lightstone for the last time. Then the rightful Lord of Ea would go forth to lead all of Eluru into the Age of Light.

In looking about the war-torn steppe, I feared that he would win the battle. From our vantage on top of the hill, I could see most of the field. On our left flank, it seemed that the enemy's Sarni had pushed back ours, while the heavy cavalry of Uskudar and Hesperu tore into the arrays of knights led by King Hadaru. The Hesperuk phalanxes had cracked open our center, and the Yarkonan battalions had moved up against Ymiru's and Lord Tomavar's men. My Meshians were too busy working their spears and kalamas against these thousands of reinforcements to turn against the Hesperuks, as I had originally planned. On our right, although the warriors of Kaash, Waas and Athar held strong against the great numbers massed before them, the Ikurian horse had nearly overwhelmed King Mohan's cavalry, which were already weakened. Soon, I thought, they would turn our flank, unless Sajagax and his warriors could come to their aid. But I had cause to worry that they too had been decimated.

'Surrender the Lightstone to me!' Morjin shouted. 'Surrender, Elahad, and I will spare all who followed you here!'

The thousands of Red Knights, those my warriors and I hadn't killed, massed behind Morjin and deployed around the curves of the hill. When it came to combat again, I did not see how we could defeat them.

The man for whom I should have guarded the Lightstone could do nothing against Morjin or the atrocities he had wrought. But I could. I could use the Lightstone as Morjin had, to bend men to my will and force them to give me their allegiance. I would persuade some of our enemy's captains and kings to come over to me, and to fall against those who did not. I might even wield the golden cup to strike death into the most willful of my enemies, as Morjin would have done his — but for Bemossed; I would certainly slay Morjin. I would put to the sword all who remained to stand against me, here on this battlefield and across Ea. I would claim dominion over the world, and I would become the King of Swords and Lord of War. But men would call me the Silver Swan, and that name would become more dreaded than the Red Dragon. And all that I did to reorder the realms of men and women to make a paradise on earth, no matter how terrible, would be for those I loved and for Ea. I told myself that I might not fall so far into evil as Morjin had.

NO!

The hardness of the Lightstone hurt my fingers; its brilliance burned my eyes. I ached to keep a grip on it and force from it all that was good and bright and beautiful. Aryu, I thought, must have told himself the same thing when he had slain Elahad and stolen it so long ago.

'Val!' It was Atara's voice. She shouted out my name and jotted me free of the Lightstone's spell. Thirty Manslayers came charging up the hill with the stout Karimah riding in front of Atara, holding the reins of her horse.

How had she come to be here? with a broken-off arrow embedded in the leather armor near her shoulder and a half dozen feathered shafts sticking out of her horse, it seemed that, she must have fought her way behind the enemy's line to this hill. Could it be that the three thousand woman warriors of the Manslayer Society had been reduced to the thirty riding with her?

'Estrella!' she called to me. 'She is the Maitreya!'

I stared at her in astonishment. Her words made no sense to me.

'I have come here to tell you this!' she said, pushing her horse up to me. She fumbled through the air and finally managed to lay her hand on my arm. 'I have seen Estrella, with the Lightstone!' 'But no scryer has ever seen the Lightstone in any vision! Or the Maitreya.'

'But I have!' Atara said. 'But all the Maitreyas have been male. All the prophecies speak of the Maitreya as 'he.''

'I don't care about the prophecies! Estrella is the Shining One!'

Morjin, from behind the wall of Red Knights protecting him, glared at Atara with a strange silence. His face seemed a mask of corruption and hate.

'He knows!' Atara suddenly cried out. 'He can see her, and it burns his mind!'

I sat on Altaru, holding my sword in one hand and the Lightstone in the other. Once a time, before I had lost the cup to Morjin, Estrella had often stood in its presence and had even held it in her hands. She had seemed to take as little interest in it as she might a teacup. My sword suddenly flared a bright glorre, and lines from the ancient verse flashed through my mind:

The Shining One

In innocence sleeps

Inside his heart

Angel fire sleeps